1. Field
The present disclosure relates to modulator arrays, and modulation devices and medical imaging apparatuses including the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the medical imaging field, the demand for information about a tissue of a living body and for imaging technologies are increasing.
For example, many cancers occur under an epithelial cell, and metastasize inside a hypodermal cell. Therefore, when it is possible to early detect cancer, a damage caused by the cancer is considerably reduced. A related art imaging technology uses a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a computed tomography (CT), ultrasound, or the like, to image an internal tomography through the skin. However, since the image resolution is low, it is impossible to early detect a small-size cancer.
On the other hand, an optical coherence tomography (OCT), an optical coherence microscopy (OCM), and a photoacoustic tomography (PAT) may use light to diagnose early stages of cancer. Although a skin penetration depth may be as low as 1 mm to 2 mm, for the OCT, or 50 mm to 50 mm, for the PAT, a resolution is higher by about ten to twenty times than, for example, of the ultrasound, and, thus, these technologies may usefully diagnose incipient cancer.
Thus, in these technologies, there is a need for apparatuses and methods to achieve the light with a controllable wavefront, to be capable of capturing an image deep inside of a bio-tissue, even when the skin tissue penetration of the incident light is low.